Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
This week, Washington descends into its annual budget brawl. House Republicans unveiled their planon Tuesday, with Senate Republicans to follow Wednesday. Their hope is to pass a common budget resolution through both bodies by mid-April. Their incentive is that if—and that is a big if—Republicans in the House and Senate can agree, they can use the process known as “reconciliation” to pass various right-wing passions by majority vote, no filibuster allowed. The House budget plan, for example, calls for repealing Obamacare, partial privatization of Medicare, turning Medicaid and food stamps into block grants for the states, and tax reforms that lower rates and eliminate any taxation on profits reported abroad, turning the rest of the world into a tax haven for multinationals. The president can veto the appropriations bill containing these items, setting up another government shutdown melodrama. This is not the way to run a railroad, much less a government.
Budgets bore and numbers numb, so reporters tend to focus on the politics. The press now is touting the fight between so-called “deficit hawks” and “defense hawks.” The former want to adhere to harsh “sequester” spending limits this year and cut them even further in out years. The latter led by the dyspeptic Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) want to blow up sequester limits for the military. But this fight is more bluster than substance. The House budget plan squares the circle by adding some $94 billion to the military’s “Overseas Contingency Operations Fund” — the money spent on fighting wars abroad — that isn’t counted under sequester limits. The real story of the Republican budget is the triumph of the anti-tax hawks. With few exceptions, Republicans are committed to slashing the basic functions of government and programs that support education, food stamps, energy and R&D to avoid asking corporations or the wealthy to contribute even one more dime in taxes.
Too often neglected in this Beltway brawl is the budget alternative offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The fifth annual CPC alternative — “The People’s Budget: A Raise for America” — is about as close to common sense as Congress gets. And it is honest: Its numbers are carefully laid out and add up. It actually says what it would invest in and how it would pay for it.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
